A man wearing gloves and a mask chose women he knew were home alone and quietly broke into their homes while they slept. Surprising them in their bedrooms, he threatened to hurt them if they didn’t cooperate, showing one woman a gun.

Then he bound their hands and sexually assaulted them for several hours. Throughout the attacks, he took pictures using a camera with a timer.

Before he left, he made them shower and brush their teeth. He took their bedding and the clothing they had been wearing with him, and he hid their phones so they couldn’t immediately call police.

Marc Patrick O’Leary, 32, of Lakewood is suspected of carrying out at least two such attacks in the Denver area in the past year, detectives from across the metro area testified in Jefferson County Court on Monday.

He is also suspected in an attempted assault, in which a 47-year-old Lakewood woman managed to escape by jumping out a bedroom window, and in an attack near Seattle sometime before he moved to Lakewood in 2009.

O’Leary was arrested last month and is being held in lieu of $5 million cash bail.

Throughout the three-hour hearing Monday, he sat at the defense table with his hands cuffed in front of him. He did not speak.

Judge K.J. Moore ruled there was probable cause to proceed with all 28 counts filed against O’Leary so far, including charges of sexual assault, kidnapping, burglary and menacing.

The charges stem from attacks on a 59-year-old woman in Westminster in August and on a 26-year-old in Golden in January, and the attempted assault of the 47-year-old in Lakewood in July.

O’Leary is also under investigation for attacks in Aurora and outside Seattle, prosecutors said. He served in the military in Korea and other overseas locations, testified Golden Detective Stacy Galbraith. He was in the reserves near Seattle from 2006 to 2009.

The Golden victim told police her attacker talked about being in the military and that he spoke four languages and traveled extensively.

He also told the woman he had been watching her for about five months and had been inside her apartment when she wasn’t home. He knew her license-plate number, date of birth and her roommate’s name, and he brought with him a pair of high heels he made her wear. The shoes were size 8 — the woman’s shoe size.

After the attack, he walked her over to her sliding-glass door and showed her where she should put a piece of wood to secure the door, so other people couldn’t get in.

Galbraith said the break in the case came when Lakewood police found a June 2010 report of a suspicious vehicle in the area of the attempted assault.

The vehicle, a white Mazda truck, matched one captured on video entering and leaving the parking lot of the Golden apartment complex on the date of that attack. It was registered to O’Leary.

Last month, police raided O’Leary’s home at 65 Harlan St. They found a memory card from a camera that had hundreds of photos of the assaults on it, Galbraith said.

They also found several pairs of women’s underwear, a gun, a lock-picking kit and a backpack that matched the description of one the Golden victim told police her attacker had carried.

Galbraith also said DNA found on the Golden victim and at the Westminster and Aurora crime scenes matched either O’Leary or his family members.

The Golden victim also told police about an egg-shaped birthmark she had seen on her attacker’s leg. The mark matches one on Marc O’Leary’s left leg, Galbraith said.

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